Tuesday, March 9, 2010

A break...sort of

This weekend I took a break from training to man a booth for State of Fitness at the Arnold Fitness Expo, here in Columbus. For those of you not familiar with the Arnold, it is the largest annual multi-sport event in the world. It has everything from fencing to bodybuilding to gymnastics to arm wrestling and much much more.

Our booth was at the Olympic Weightlifting Championship competition -- fitting since we have three USAWeightlifting coaches on staff. In fact, the plates and bars for the warm-up area came from our gym.

I say I took a break from training. But realistically, it was a different sort of workout. I was on my feet Friday from 8 am to 9 pm, Saturday from 8 am to 5 pm, and Sunday from 8 am to 5 pm. No amount of training can prepare you for trade show duty.

For us the show was a success. We made some new friends, brought in some people to train with us, and solidified our status as a serious weightlifting gym (no machines here!) Arnold himself passed through our booth, and Rick Adams, executive director of USAWeightlifting spent some quality time with us discussing the future of the sport.

And in a pleasant surprise to Cat and myself, Rick came out to our gym Monday morning before catching his flight out of Columbus. It was an honor to have him visit, and we look forward to working closely with USAWeightlifting in the future.